Coffee and Tea
by percychased
Summary: Someday, it'll just be a story. And her face will be a memory Cho's mind. But right now, this moment isn't just a story. She's watching the tale unfold from the sidelines, and she'll always have whatever Rose needs. unrequited!Cho/Rose.


**2024**

_Home is the word for whatever is beneath my feet._

It's been over twenty years since Cho started working at that coffee shop at the end of Diagon Alley.

A minimum-wage, no-added-benefits job - but she loved it. It was very fulfilling, and Cho didn't think she could do anything as serious (not to mention boring) as paper-pushing at the Ministry or writing Ministry-influenced lies for the Daily Prophet. The atmosphere was calm, comforting, and she had made some of the strongest friendships with the regulars that frequented there.

She saw some of her old Hogwarts friends from time to time, and she had always thought the change was astounding. The pressure from their jobs, kids, marriage - that had all gotten to them. They were almost different people.

She wasn't. She was turning forty-five this year, and despite the turmoil of her teenage years, she didn't feel it. Cho still felt like she was nineteen, a new start in a new flat and a new job. She hadn't gotten married, hadn't even dated, nor had any children. She didn't feel the need to.

Despite her simple life of working, travelling, and home life, there was one tiny bit that had recently complicated the mix.

And she went by the name of Rose.

Rose, a perfectly suitable name for the young woman who was young enough to be her daughter. Rose Weasley, in fact - a niece of the boy she went out with almost thirty years ago. The girl was a regular - she came almost every single day, and ask for the same thing every morning - a coffee, one cream, one sugar. She needn't order most of the time; Cho saw her coming in and prepared the coffee immediately.

Cho didn't just see Rose come in for her daily coffee. She saw the rise and fall of her relationship with Scorpius; long-lasting dates in the corner, snogging and talking, to only meeting occasionally, to not meeting at all. Cho saw the last fateful meeting, where they argued and he left and she sobbed.

_Idiot teenage boys_, Cho had thought, slightly nostalgic. _Never know the right thing to say._

Rose had gone up to her after that last date, and attempted to pay for the drink and pastries Scorpius left behind.

Cho had shook her head gently, a ghost of a smile on her face. "It's on the house," she told the beautiful girl, who thanked her appreciatively before wrapping her black scarf - a startling contrast from her pale skin, freckles, and vibrant hair - around her neck and descending into the cold weather of Britain's December.

* * *

It was two years later, mere days after Cho's forty-seventh birthday (her coworkers and herself had gone shopping in Muggle London, how fantastic it was) that Rose brought someone knew with her. A boy with light, dirty-blonde hair and a smile as wide as the Great Barrier Reef.

Cho prepared the girl's usual - the coffee with one cream and one sugar - before inquiring as to what the man would like to order.

"Large peppermint tea," he asked, grinning, "with extra milk."

There was something about him that made her heart tighten a little bit, but she ignored it - this one seemed like a nicer bloke than Scorpius, and who was she, a middle-aged woman with no spouse and no children, to judge a young woman she barely knew choices' in men?

Those two - she had learned his name was Lysander Scamander, and remembered vaguely a young girl with long, scraggly blonde locks and a distant look in her eye - came everyday. It wasn't just the coffee with one cream and one sugar, it was the peppermint tea with extra milk, too.

But instead of the dates becoming less and less frequent, they happened more and more often. They often stopped by in the evening, grabbing their usuals. Sometimes they'd sit near where she'd prepare the drinks and pastries, and Cho would hear snippets of conversation - _'James' wedding,' 'Lily's Auror training', 'Mum and Dad are going to France for two weeks!"._

Rose's face was what she imagined herself looking when Cedric spoke to her - utterly entranced by his words. And it wasn't the fact that _he_ was making her happy, it was the fact that she _was_ happy, and for that, Cho was grateful.

* * *

One night, six months before her fiftieth birthday ('half a century, darling!' her mother had exclaimed) Lysander came in alone - a sight that was odd, because the two were always together.

"The usual, then?" Cho had asked, raising one eyebrow.

"Yes, please," he ordered politely, and leaned in closer to her, like he was sharing a secret, although there was no one else in the room, "but could you also make me something special? Anything. It's for my girlfriends - well, fiancee, if she'll take me."

Something felt weird in Cho's stomach. "That's too sweet," she said, a little bit tonelessly, nodding. "Of course I will." He beamed at her, taking a seat and tapping his foot.

Twenty minutes, one coffee, one tea, and one large heart-shaped donut later, Lysander had gotten down on one knee, holding the sparkling ring in his hand.

Cho had found the moment all too bittersweet, because she saw _Rose_, the girl who had been going here almost five years now, the girl who graduated and dated and grew, but she also saw _herself_ and Rose, and for a brief, flitting moment, she wondered what it would be like to be Lysander at the moment; to feel her heart soaring and a brilliant grin settle on her face.

She, instead, smile sweetly as Lysander slipped the finger onto his new fiancee's hand.

* * *

She was fifty-two and felt all but old. (_It'll catch up to you_, she was told.') They both came, accompanied by their wedding bands, every single day.

One day, however, her ordered changed.

"Mine will be decaffeinated, please," she ordered, running her fingers through her long, vibrant hair. Rose giggled and intertwined hands with her husband. She let a hand ghost over her midsection, and Cho got the memo.

She smiled at the girl who was much more important to her, coffee and vibrant hair and everything, than Cho was to Rose, and prepared the decaffeinated coffee for the expectant mother.

* * *

Cho was fifty-five, and her age was most definitely catching up to her. (She wasn't as young as she used to be - Merlin, she was five years away from_ sixty_!)

The beautiful redheaded woman - oh no, she definitely wasn't a little girl anymore - bounced a baby on her hip, and without words, Cho made her a cup of coffee, one cream and one sugar.

Without fail, or words, no matter what happened, Cho would always have a cup of coffee, one cream and one sugar, ready for Rose.

* * *

a/n - pairing cho/rose, unrequited for the martha jones category in the doctor who appreciation competition. this was so much fun to write, tell me how i did!


End file.
